In my earlier post, What the Numbers Tell You, I discussed the value of looking at data trends and using this information to improve your business. But what about your website?
When was the last time you looked at the website analytic reports? Whether you use Google, Piwik or another option, these reports offer valuable information that you can use to improve results.
Your dashboard or landing page provides an overview of important metrics. It not only allows you to look at the data by day, week or month, you can look at trends too. You can customize the period you want to look at then compare it to the previous period or year. Talk about helpful.
3 Performance Indicators Worth Noting
Unique visits. While visits provide total traffic, unique visitors represent people since it eliminates visitors returning multiple times.
Average page views. The page per visit is an indicator of engagement. Are they going to one page or multiple pages when they visit your site. The higher the number, the more engaging.
Bounce rate. This shows how many people left immediately after landing on your site. A high bounce rate is not a good thing. With a few clicks, you can see which traffic sources and keywords are producing the highest bounce rates – and take action to improve it.
But there’s more. Traffic source data is broken into three primary categories – direct, referring sites and search engines. If you use campaigns and include analytics, they will appear too. With a click, you can see what sites are referring traffic to you and what keywords are being used to find you. Wouldn’t that be good to know?
Finally, the content section provides a lot of information to help you determine which pages are of most interest to web visitors. With a click, you can see which pages get the most traffic and what are the top landing pages (don’t assume it’s the home page!). And for those of you with Google Analytics, check out the In-Page Analytics under Content. It will show you the % of people who click on every link on your site – from the header or side bars to those contained within the content. Really cool and often surprising.
If you are among the many who are not using this tool, start exploring today. And use the information to improve your web traffic, get people engaged and increase conversions.
More Ways to Grow Your Business
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